Uprooted Palestinians are at the heart of the conflict in the M.E Palestinians uprooted by force of arms. Yet faced immense difficulties have survived, kept alive their history and culture, passed keys of family homes in occupied Palestine from one generation to the next.

Saturday, 27 April 2013

"...That's what the head of
the Israel Defense Forces
intelligence research and analysis division said Tuesday, becoming
the latest to allege that Damascus was employing weapons banned under
international law against its own people.The claim further stoked the debate about the
international community's role in Syria ..."

"... Speaking
at the Brotherhood’s offices in Istanbul, a Syrian revolution flag
wrapped around his neck, Mr Shaqfa denounced what he said was a campaign against
the group backed by “outside” forces. He countered widespread accusations that
his organisation, which has existed only in exile since a bloody 1980s crackdown
by Mr Assad’s father Hafez, has been trying to control the fractious Syrian
opposition....“Those who attack us have no influence on the ground – they
are media personalities and are trying through their attacks to create influence
for themselves,” he said.

The Brotherhood is not thought to have significant support on
the ground, where membership in the organisation has been a capital
offence under the Assad regime.

It is difficult to gauge the extent to which
it will be able to reassert itself, especially at a time when armed groups and
not political parties hold sway. Many of the rebel groups are puritanical
Salafis, espousing a stricter interpretation of Islam than the
Brotherhood.

Perhaps in an attempt to pave the way for a more official
political comeback, the Brotherhood now has armed rebels affiliated with it.
Dozens of small brigades calling themselves shields of the revolution emerged
over the past year and are supported by the organisation....

Although the
Brotherhood is believed to be backed by Qatar and Turkey, Mr Shaqfa insisted
that all the help it has given on the ground, including the humanitarian support
it has provided, comes from exiled members, many of them working in the
Gulf..."

Gilad Atzmon: “With true music I want to go back to those kinds of unique feelings of authenticity”
.23 April 2013

Silvia Cattori:Is your new album Song of Metropolis different from previous projects?Gilad Atzmon: To start with, I have been touring with the Orient House Ensemble for more than 12 years. Until now our music was an attempt to integrate the oriental sound into Jazz and vice versa. Songs Of The Metropolis is a completely different project; it is an attempt to find the sound, the colors that remind us what home is all about.

In the last three decades we have been invaded by globalism, by big monopolies, those who tell us what car to drive, what music to listen to, what clothes to wear, and I am really tired of it all.
We have seen too many people who rather than exploring their authentic self, they for some reason prefer to identify with one sort of margin or another. They speak ‘as a Jew’, ‘as a black’, ‘as a gay’, ‘as a woman’, ‘as a musician’. Rather than thinking for themselves, they prefer to identify with something else. I really thought that music is the way to knock it down; to try to remind you of the colors that make you (as yourself) cry, make you feel, make you love, make you hate; every city in Europe has a bell, a unique bell. If you travel a thousand miles but suddenly you hear the bell of the church of your home town you feel like home, you are at home. That is what I try to do. I try to bring to light different bells. Look at us, I am here with you having breakfast in Thalwil [village in the German part of Switzerland], and everything we eat here is from here; and if I do a blind test when I am in America, you put Gruyere cheese on my plate it would feel for me like Switzerland.

I want to celebrate authenticity; not to be afraid of patriotism; not to be afraid of national feelings; to learn how to celebrate nationalism but not at the expense of anyone else. The problem that we have with nationalism is that many times in the past it has been celebrated on others’ expense. Zionism was celebrated at the expense of the Palestinians. Nazism was celebrated at the expense of the rest of Europe. But at the moment this is not unique to nationalism. Because when we look at liberal democracies such as America and Britain we see a clear repetition of the same pattern. They are clearly celebrating their symptoms at the expense of the entire Arab world.

With music and beauty I want to go back to that kind of unique feeling of authenticity. However, it is not very simple; I play a tune from Buenos Aires and I am not Argentinean. I play a tune from Berlin and I’m not German. I am under an imminent danger of becoming a Zelig. This in itself is a clear Jewish phobia that I have to deal with. I believe that my humor is there to rescue me when I surf too close to the wind. You witnessed it yesterday; people are really having a great time listening to this music. It is a lot of fun to watch.

In Germany a lot of people complained about my Berlin tune. They say: “How is it possible that you gave Argentina ten minutes and for us you give just two”. They say that it is kind of Germanism, they complain that I reduce Germany into a Weimar cabaret. And they are actually correct. For some reason this is how I connect with the ‘German sound’. Interestingly enough, the people who produced that type of Weimar Cabaret were largely Jewish. There must be a subconscious bond here that I myself fail to grasp yet. After all, I was a Jew for the first 30 years of my life.

Silvia Cattori: Last night’s the audience was so enthusiastic at the Thalwil Jazz club. Were you happy to play there?Gilad Atzmon: It was really a positive experience. We started the European tour 5 days ago. There is nothing I hate more then touring Europe in the first days of the spring. After a long cold winter nobody wants to sit in a Club. I was really afraid when we started. In Frankfurt we didn’t have a big audience. But then in Vienna it was already very busy. Yesterday in Thalwil we were completely sold out.

We basically produce beauty by means of nostalgia. All my music is nostalgia; it is a cry to something that we lost, yet we still maintain a vivid memory of it. My music is that attempt to communicate with my/our lack. Intimacy is something I used to feel when I listened to music when I was young but now with TV, internet, we are all reduced into a herd of consciousness, we are expected to move en mass. The way around it is to identify with dwelling, with the soil we live on, with the fruits that grow around you, with the people who speak your language and love the music you happen to dance to. Now I am in Switzerland; so as I told you it is not a problem here because everything I eat, the cheese, the eggs, except the coffee, is from around here. In England you will sit for a dinner and nothing you put in your mouth would be from the land around you. In culture it is pretty much the same. I think that one of the reasons I am popular as you saw yesterday is because I remind people how to bond with themselves.

Silvia Cattori:So, cultural globalisation, music “industry”, are in your view the reasons why the young generation is less interested in jazz music than our generation?Gilad Atzmon: Actually, there are a lot of reasons. This is a different discussion. One of the reasons we [The Orient House band] survive, and we do relatively well, is because our music appeals to a wider audience. In Vienna, for instance, the audience was quite mixed. Even yesterday at the Thalwil Jazz Club the audience was younger than the usual jazz panthers. But you are right, jazz, like many other styles of music, has been reduced into ashes because, the industry decided, for a very long time, what was right and what was wrong.

Thanks to the industry authentic English music pretty much disappeared. One of the reasons has something to do with the fact that London regards itself as a cultural globalisation Mecca. The music of London is supposed to appeal to people all over the world. So Robbie Williams and the Spice Girls are indeed British artists but their products seek a far wider appeal. The result: English folk has been annihilated. Only now it starts to come up just because the industry is falling apart. Ten years ago I discussed this issue with a scholar of English folk, he told me “if you really want to listen to English folk music there is some smaller place in Upper State New York”. There are some remote regions in the USA where English folk has been maintained pretty much intact.

And when I visited Buenos Aires 10 years ago, I noticed that Tango artists were pretty old, 70 and more. Last week I noticed that the oldest Tango artist in Argentina is about 30. In the last 10 years they started again. They try to connect to the music; they had the crisis, they paid the price. They now try to re-launch their culture and celebrate their particularity exactly when it was stopped. Buenos Aires is maybe as big as New York. But every block you will find a massive book shop, music shop, record shop. In London we do not have a single record shop anymore; by the end of this year we may not see a single book shop. And those who still sell books are dedicating shelves to diet & cookery books, not exactly Kant or Heidegger.

Silvia Cattori:That means that the Montreux jazz festival no longer has any link with what it was when it started in the sixties; and that an authentic musician like you may no longer have a place in such exhibitions?Gilad Atzmon: For sure. Montreux was a legendary revolutionary festival, it explored cutting edge music but it had to survive in a competitive world. At a certain stage, like many other festivals, it became a vehicle or shall we say an outlet for the industry. Now the good thing is that there won’t be a music industry in two or three years. So you know Montreux will have to find its way again and it is part of the cultural economy. However, I do not want to complain here, I am an artist; my job is to create a new voice, to re-invent myself. This is what I am doing for a living.

Some people asked me yesterday “Why do you come to Ulster [a Swiss village]. Why do you not play in Zurich”. In fact, I played in Zurich last year. This tour I am playing in Vienna, I am playing in Berlin, I am playing in Paris [April 24 and 25], I play in major music capitals. I can not be every time everywhere. But I am happy to play. Yesterday I played here in this small village; I even do not know where we are. But the place was full. And I am very happy. I could see people having a great time; I could see the band receiving a standing ovation; I am totally cheered.

I never ask festivals to host me; if a festival deems me fit, they know where to find me. I am probably at the moment, one of the busiest musicians in Europe. Why do I say that? Because I am playing every night; in the last six month I toured every continent. I am indeed problematic when it comes to my views; some people are offended by my writings (*). But when I see how I am sold in Europe, Japan, Latin America and the USA I am actually pleased. It reads like ‘Gilad Atzmon the philosopher Jazz artist comes to town’. I am pleased with it; it is a fair description of who I am and what I am.Silvia Cattori:Many thanks dear Gilad Atzmon.
(*) The Wandering Who? A Study Of Jewish Identity Politics and Jewish political interests..
The book can be ordered on Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk

River toSeaUprooted PalestinianThe views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!

"...why was further US-involvement
(Turkish) rhetoric kept alive?3. Unfair criticism to mask
others’ failures: All agree that the international community has failed to stop
the atrocities of civil war in Syria. However, no credible plan has been brought
up to suggest that a foreign military intervention would indeed save more lives
than it would risk. This is a difficult statement to understand for many pundits
who have never experienced war, particularly a civil war. Have not all
initiatives, including Davutoglu’s very own, failed utterly to bring about a
regional agreement on the Syrian civil war? Could you name any US president who
has gone on a vacation with Bashar and his family? When the current AKP
government was lifting visa restrictions and becoming “brothers” through booming
trade relations with the cruel Syrian dictatorship of four decades, the US
indeed had limited contacts and strict financial sanctions against Syria in
place.... even the harshest critics agree the US should not put ground troops in
Syria. Short of that, the US has been engaged in Syria through providing
nonlethal aid, vetting and training the opposition. However unpleasant the
results are, US actions and rhetoric have been consistent in the case of
Syria.4. Post-Assad transition concerns: It would be foolish of any country to belittle
the difficulties that would fall upon the region if Syria drifts into further
abyss.Turkish pundits’ newly found hatred toward
the Syrian leadership is mind-bogglingand to some extent undermines
the design of successful, feasible policies. Despite several meetings, there is
still no unified opposition against the regime. One cannot help but doubt
Turkish intelligence on Syria when Davutoglu is quoted on CNNTurk saying there was no Jabhat
al-Nusra in Syria before the civil war..... Yet, however disturbing
self-assessment might be, Turks need to ask what their plans are for the
post-Assad era: Is Turkey ready to wave the bogeyman Bashar goodbye without a
legitimate alternative replacement? If the struggle to establish a “secular,”
not jihadist government in Syria is a Western ideal, then how does the Turkish
planning conceive the next Syrian government? Would that plan bring stability
and peace to the bleeding Turkish-Syrian border along with Iran and Iraq — not
even considering the other borders?Although the Turkish government is mute
on these questions and the press is extremely emotional on the policy failures
in Syria, they must all know that stoking the fires of anti-Americanism will not
save any Syrian lives or end the horrid civil war. "

As NATO terror front collapses in Syria, US attempts to justify intervention by drumming up familiar WMD lies.

Image from Independent describes “Man whose WMD lies led to 100,000 deaths confesses all: Defector tells how US officials ‘sexed up’ his fictions to make the case for 2003 invasion.” In retrospect, the corporate-media has no problem admitting the insidious lies that were told to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq – the lead up to the war was another story. A verbatim repeat of these admitted lies are being directed at Syria amidst the West’s failure to overthrow the government with terrorist proxies.The last two weeks have seen a series of victories for the Syrian Army across Syria. It appears that 2 full companies of so-called “Free Syrian Army” fighters have been annihilated near Damascus, while government forces have restored order in parts of Homs and along the previously porous Lebanese-Syrian border.Time has run out for the West, and it appears that they are desperately seeking any excuse to rescue their failing proxy war. When urgent, but otherwise unjustified military intervention is needed, a “humanitarian” pretext is usually invented – as it was in Libya. Failing that, as the West has already clearly done in Syria, an even more tenuous narrative has been resurrected from its well-earned grave. CNN has reported in their article, “Hagel: Evidence of chemical weapons use in Syria,” that: U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced Thursday that the United States has evidence that chemical weapons have been used in Syria.This comes a couple of days after an Israeli intelligence official said Damascus was using weapons banned under international law against its own people in the country’s civil war. Syria has said rebels have used chemical weapons.U.S. President Barack Obama has said the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons against its own people in the country would be a “game changer.”Astonishingly, the West is attempting to repeat tales of “WMD’s” in Syria, just as it infamously did in Iraq. In the Washington Post’s “U.S. intelligence agencies: Assad used chemical weapons ‘on a small scale’ ” the nature of this “evidence” is elaborated on (emphasis added):Hagel said the intelligence agencies’ assessment was reached with “varying degrees of confidence,” meaning that they lacked proof or overwhelming evidence. He said the conclusion was “reached within the last 24 hours” and that the White House delivered a letter outlining the findings to Congress Thursday morning.A letter from the White House via the Washington Post exposed further just how tenuous the evidence actually is (emphasis added):Our intelligence community does assess with varying degrees of confidence that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria, specifically the chemical agent sarin.This assessment is based in part on physiological samples. Our standard of evidence must build on these intelligence assessments as we seek to establish credible and corroborated facts. For example, the chain of custody is not clear, so we cannot confirm how the exposure occurred and under what conditions. We do believe that any use of chemical weapons in Syria would very likely have originated with the Assad regime.Physiological samples indicating sarin – in other words – samples taken from people exposed to sarin, could have been produced in a number of ways. It is confirmed that Libya’s chemical weapon stockpiles included sarin and mustard gas. In the Washington Post’s 2011 “Libya’s poison gas unaffected by turmoil, official says” it was stated:Experts believe that Libya destroyed about 3,300 bombshells designed to carry mustard and sarin gas chemicals years ago, as part of its deal to end decades of economic and diplomatic isolation with the West.But some 10 metric tons of mustard sulfate and sarin gas precursor remain stockpiled in barrels at three locations in the Libyan desert south of Tripoli, where Moammar Gaddafi has holed up in a last-ditch fight to keep from being overthrown.Many experts worry that the barrels are ripe for picking by terrorists linked to al-Qaeda.Of course, since 2011, it is now confirmed that the so-called “Libyan rebels” were actually Al Qaeda terrorists operating under the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) which has been confirmed to have subsequently traveled to Syria to join Al Qaeda’s al-Nusra franchise in NATO’s proxy war there.It is just as likely that NATO’s proxy forces brought along with them not only small arms and cash from Libya, but also heavier weapons, including possibly chemical weapons – and specifically – sarin and mustard gas.Image via the Guardian describe “Chemical containers in the Libyan desert. There are concerns unguarded weapons could fall into the hands of Islamist militants. Photograph: David Sperry/AP” As increasing evidence reveals Libyan fighters and weapons are pouring into Syria, it seems the West is preparing to preempt or leverage the inevitability that Libya’s chemical arsenal has also found its way into the besieged nation.Considering that the Syrian government knows the use of chemical weapons would basically hand the moral, strategic, and geopolitical initiative over to the West, and in light of its recent gains made using conventional weapons and tactics, it makes it all the more likely any real sarin to be found and used in Syria was the work of NATO proxies attempting to produce a plausible casus belli. Terrorists operating in Syria have already been caught using other chemical weapons.And yet still, despite all of this doubt, the Western political establishment has hailed the so-called “findings” as the “game changer” required to green-light US military intervention.Remember “Curveball”It is absolutely imperative to recall the propaganda campaign conducted prior to invading Iraq in 2003. Chemical weapons were also used as a pretext for an otherwise unjustified war. The “intelligence” used by Hagel’s predecessors was admittedly fabricated on-demand.In the British Independent’s article, “Man whose WMD lies led to 100,000 deaths confesses all: Defector tells how US officials ‘sexed up’ his fictions to make the case for 2003 invasion,” it stated:A man whose lies helped to make the case for invading Iraq – starting a nine-year war costing more than 100,000 lives and hundreds of billions of pounds – will come clean in his first British television interview tomorrow.

“Curveball”, the Iraqi defector who fabricated claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, smiles as he confirms how he made the whole thing up. It was a confidence trick that changed the course of history, with Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi’s lies used to justify the Iraq war.He tries to defend his actions: “My main purpose was to topple the tyrant in Iraq because the longer this dictator remains in power, the more the Iraqi people will suffer from this regime’s oppression.”We can already envision the establishment defending in hindsight its next “noble lie” to unseat “the tyrant in Syria.”The Independent continues:But Mr Janabi, speaking in a two-part series, Modern Spies, starting tomorrow on BBC2, says none of it was true. When it is put to him “we went to war in Iraq on a lie. And that lie was your lie”, he simply replies: “Yes.”US officials “sexed up” Mr Janabi’s drawings of mobile biological weapons labs to make them more presentable, admits Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, General Powell’s former chief of staff. “I brought the White House team in to do the graphics,” he says, adding how “intelligence was being worked to fit around the policy”.“How “intelligence was being worked to fit around the policy,” indeed is the most important aspect of the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, and is without doubt what is being done in Washington, Doha, Riyadh, and Tel Aviv in regards to Syria now.The “Curveball-style” lies told about Iraq are now being repeated about Syria by an increasingly unhinged West who has tried every trick in the book, and is flipping back to the beginning to start over again. The question is, can the world afford to be led down this path again, knowing exactly where it ends? Nations and people outside the Wall Street-London international order are tasked with foiling this criminal war of aggression – unable this time to plead ignorance to the West’s true intentions.

River toSeaUprooted PalestinianThe views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!

[NYTimes]
"... Civilians
had fled the town, the activist said, acknowledging that the fighting had
disrupted rebel supply chains. “We have convoys stopped now because roads have
been closed and we can’t use them for the time being.”Another activist,
who identified himself as Jamal, called Otaiba a “very essential
location.”In the confusion of battle, the Syrian Observatory for Human
Rights, a monitoring body based in Britain and reliant on a network of
opposition sources inside Syria, said Thursday that government forces had indeed
overrun the town late on Wednesday, forcing rebels to try to regroup.A
government victory in the town could prove to be a setback to the rebel effort
to amass forces for a thrust closer to Damascus, where government forces remain
in control...."

Obama Warns Syria’s Use of Chemical Weapons Would Be ‘Game Changer’

U.S. President Barack Obama said on Friday that Syria’s use of chemical weapons would be a "game changer," although he meanwhile cautioned such intelligence assessments were still "preliminary."

"It's obviously horrific as it is when mortars are being fired on civilians and people are being indiscriminately killed, to use potential weapons of mass destruction on civilian populations crosses another line with respect to international norms and international law," Obama said before meeting with Jordanian King Abdullah II at the White House.

"And, that is going to be a game changer," he told the press.

"We have to act prudently. We have to make these assessments deliberately, but I think all of us -- not just in the United States, but around the world -- recognize how we cannot stand by and permit the systematic use weapons like chemical weapons on civilian populations," said Obama, vowing to "mobilize the international community" on this issue.

The White House claimed on Thursday that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons in its conflict with the opposition militant groups.

In a letter sent to some members of the Congress, the White House said that "The U.S. intelligence community assesses with some degree of varying confidence that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria, specifically the chemical agent sarin."

U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who was on a visit to Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates, issued a statement on Thursday, saying the conclusion was made in the past 24 hours after assessment for some time.

However, Obama on Friday was still cautious on the final conclusion that Assad has used chemical weapons, and did not claim the Syrian leader has crossed this red line.

"These are preliminary assessments," he said alongside the Jordanian king.

"There are a range of questions around how, when, where these weapons may have been used."
Obama promised that Washington would pursue a "very vigorous investigation" itself and meanwhile cooperate with the international community.

"We're gonna be consulting with our partners in the region, as well as the international community and the United Nations to make sure that we are investigating this as effectively and as quickly as we can," he noted.

These are the same "jews" that gave the world Bolshevism and the resultant 50 million deaths in the Soviet Gulags. I have to be honest, I'm not sure if they are really jews at all, strictly speaking they are Khazars or Ashkenazis from Eastern Europe, with NO historical links to the Holy Land whatsoever

By Uri AvneryWhen the huge immigration wave from the Soviet Union arrived in 1990, we [Israelis] were glad.
First of all, because we believe that all immigration is a good thing for the country. This, I believe, is generally the case.

Second, because we were convinced that this specific group of immigrants would push our country in the right direction.

These people, we told ourselves, have been educated for 70 years in an internationalist spirit. They have just overthrown a cruel dictatorial system, so they must be avid democrats. Many of them are not Jews, but only relatives (sometimes remote) of Jews. So here we have hundreds of thousands of secular, internationalist and non-nationalist new citizens, just what we need. They would add a positive element to the demographic cocktail that is Israel.

Moreover, since the pre-state Jewish community in the country (the so-called yishuv) was largely shaped by immigrants from Czarist and early revolutionary Russia, the new immigrants would surely mingle easily with the general population.

Or so we thought.
The present situation is the very opposite.

Racists in a ghetto

The immigrants from the former Soviet Union – all bundled together as “the Russians” in common parlance – have not mingled at all. They are a separate community, living in a self-made ghetto.
They continue to speak Russian. They read their own Russian newspapers, all of them rabidly nationalist and racist. They vote for their own party, led by the Moldovan-born Evet (now Avigdor) Lieberman. They have practically no contact with other Israelis.

The very large majority of them [immigrants from the former Soviet Union] hate Arabs, reject peace, support the settlers and vote for right-wing governments.

In their first two years in the country, they voted mainly for Yitzhak Rabin of the Labour party, but not because he promised peace, but because he was a general and was presented to them as an outstanding military man. From then on they have consistently voted for the extreme right.

The very large majority of them hate Arabs, reject peace, support the settlers and vote for right-wing governments.

Since they now constitute almost 20 per cent of the Israeli population, this is a major component of Israel’s move to the right.

Why for heaven’s sake?

There are several theories, probably all of them right.

Why so obnoxious?

One I heard from a high-ranking Russian official:

During the Soviet era, the Jews were just Soviet citizens like everybody else. When the union broke up, everybody retreated into his own nation. The Jews were left in a void. So they went to Israel and became more Israeli than all the other Israelis. Even the non-Jews among them became Israeli super-patriots.

Another theory goes like this:

When communism collapsed in Russia, there was nothing but nationalism (or religion) to take its place. The population was imbued with totalitarian attitudes, a disdain for democracy and liberalism, a longing for strong leaders. There was also the widespread racism of the “white” population of the northern Soviet Union towards the “dark” peoples of the south. When the Russian Jews (and non-Jews) came to Israel, they brought these attitudes with them. They just substituted the Arabs for the despised Armenians, Chechens and all the others. These attitudes are nourished daily by the Russian newspapers and TV stations in Israel.

I noticed these attitudes when I visited the Soviet Union for the first time in 1990, during the era of Mikhail Gorbachev’s Glasnost…

…it took only a few days for us [Uri and Rachel Avnery] to be amazed at the rampant racism we saw everywhere around us [in Moscow]. Dark-skinned citizens were treated with undisguised contempt.

I went to Russia to write a book about the end of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe (it was published in Hebrew under the title Lenin Does Not Live Here Anymore.) Rachel [Uri Avnery’s wife] and I liked Moscow very much, but it took only a few days for us to be amazed at the rampant racism we saw everywhere around us. Dark-skinned citizens were treated with undisguised contempt. When we went to the market and joked with the vendors, all people from the south with whom we established immediate rapport, our young, nice, serious-faced Russian translator distanced himself quite openly.

My friends and I have been meeting every Friday for some 50 years. When the Russians started to arrive, our “table” was in Tel Aviv’s Café Kassit, the mythological meeting place of writers, artists and such.

One day we noticed that a group of young Russian immigrants had established a “table” of their own. Full of sympathy – as well as curiosity – we joined them from time to time.

At the beginning it worked. Some friendships were struck up. But then something curious happened. They distanced themselves from us, making it clear that for them we were only some uncultured Middle Eastern barbarians, unworthy of association with people brought up on Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. Soon enough they disappeared from our view.

Who is to blame?

I was reminded of this last Friday when an unusually heated discussion broke out at our table. We had a guest, a young “Russian” female scientist, who accused the left of indifference and a patronizing attitude towards the Russian community which had caused it to turn to the right. A leading female peace activist reacted furiously, arguing that the Russians had already come to the country with a near-fascist attitude.

I agreed with both of them.

Israel’s attitude towards new immigrants has always been a bit on the strange side.

Leaders like David Ben-Gurion treated Zionist immigration as if it was merely a transport problem. They went to extraordinary lengths to bring Jews from all over the world to Israel, but once they were here, they were left to fend for themselves. Sure, material assistance was given, housing was provided, but next to nothing was done to integrate them into society.

This was true of the mass immigration of German Jews in the 1930s, the Oriental Jews in the 1950s and the Russians in the 1990s. When the Russian Jews showed a marked preference for the USA, our government pressured the American administration to shut the gates in their face, so they were practically forced to come here. When they did come, they were left to congregate in ghettos, instead of being induced to spread and settle among us.

The Israeli left was no exception. When some feeble efforts to draw them to the peace camp were unsuccessful, they were left well alone. The organization to which I belong, Gush Shalom, once distributed 100,000 copies of our flagship publication (Truth against Truth, the history of the conflict) in Russian, but when we received only one sole answer, we were discouraged. Obviously, the Russians did not give a damn for the history of this country, about which they do not have the slightest idea.

To understand the importance of this problem one must visualize the composition of Israeli society as it is (I have written about this in the past). It consists of five main sectors, of almost equal size, as follows:

Jews of European origin, called Ashkenazim, to which most of the cultural, economic, political and military elite belongs. The left is almost completely concentrated here.

Jews of Oriental origin, often called (mistakenly) Sephardim, from Arab and other Muslim countries. They are the base of Likud.

Religious Jews, which include the ultra-Orthodox Haredim, both Ashkenazi and Oriental, as well as the National-Religious Zionists, which include the leadership of the settlers.

Arab-Palestinian citizens, mostly located in three large geographical blocs.

The “Russians”

Some of these sectors overlap to some minor extent, but the picture is clear. The Arabs and many of the Ashkenazim belong to the peace camp, all the others are solidly right-wing.

Because of this, it is absolutely imperative to win over at least sections of the Oriental Jews, the religious and – yes – the “Russians”, to create a majority for peace. To my mind, that is the most important task of the peace camp at this moment.

At the end of the furious debate at our table, I tried to calm down the two sides:
“No need to fight about sharing the blame. There is quite enough for everybody.”

"... Hamish
de Bretton-Gordon, head of the counter chemical warfare company SecureBio and
the former commanding officer of the army’s chemical weapons unit, said the US
was right to cautious about Israeli, British and French claims that nerve agent
have been used by the Syrian government. .

People like myself and others went to war in Iraq on some pretty
spurious WMD “intelligence”. So everybody ... the US government and the UK government
... are very circumspect. If the red line is cross, as Obama said that would be
a game changer. Getting ground troops involved in Syria would be a hugely
challenging area and I’m sure Obama and Cameron are trying to avoid that at all
costs.

De
Bretton-Gordon pointed out that this could establish whether chemical weapons
had been used, but not who had fired them.

The
difficulty is the chain of evidence ... The only true way this done can be done,
is by the UN getting in on the ground. Is Assad going let the UN come and do it?
I don’t see it at the moment?In my professional opinion that sort of evidence [gathered
outside Syria] would be very difficult for somebody to use as crossing the red
line and a game changer. Very good background, but I don’t think it would be
demonstrative enough to say this chemical weapons has been used here, by the
regime or the opposition.

Britain’s
claim that Syrian troops were poisoned by nerve agents in a friendly fire
incident is a possible “explanation”, De Bretton-Gordon said.

But
he added:

I’m
not so sure that perhaps the opposition haven’t been using what I would call
improvised weapons. There are lots of reports of CL-17 being used which is
domestic chlorine, and there is evidence that organophosphates have been used
...It is
potentially plausible that each side has tried to frame the other by using
improvised chemical weapons, or actual chemical weapons.If sarin was used, you would
expect to see many more casualties.

De
Bretton-Gordon denied that the US appeared to be shifting its red line on
chemical weapons in Syria.

Every day I get sent stuff from inside country, saying
this what’s happening, but none of it is absolutely conclusive. The US might be
prevaricating, but I don’t think they are changing their view on the red line,
it is just very difficult to prove. That step of intervention is something I
don’t think anybody in the world wants at this
stage.

“This is one damn fine idea, what took us so long to see a simple solution that was right in front of our eyes for Christ’s sake”, Senator John McCain of “Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” and “no-fly zones for Syria” notoriety, reportedly demanded to know from Dennis Ross during a recent Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) brain storming session in Washington DC.

Ross, a founder of WINEP with Israeli government start up cash (presumably reimbursed unknowingly by American taxpayers) and currently WINEP's “Counselor”, reportedly responded to the idea of facilitating Al Qeada to wage jihad against Hezbollah with the comment: “Shiites aren’t the only ones seeking death to demonstrate their ‘resistance’ to whatever. Plenty of other Muslims also want to die as we saw last week in Boston. Let ‘em all go at it and Israel can sweep out their s--- when it’s over.”

One Congressional staffer attending the WINEP event emailed me, “Dennis spoke in jest -- well I assumed he did -- but who knows anymore? Things are getting ever crazier inside some of these pro-Israel think-tanks around here.”

Featured on the front page of its April 25 edition, the Zionist-compliant New York Times writes that the Assad regime is apparently recovering but, “it must be understood that for all of the justified worries about the (al Qaeda affiliated) rebels “Assad remains an ally of Iran and Hezbollah. “

The Times adopts the views of Islamophobe, Daniel Pipes, who recommends that the US try to keep the two sides in Syria fighting as long as possible until they destroy each other. Pipes, now serving as an advisor to John McClain, wrote in the Washington Times on April 11, “Evil forces pose less danger to us when they make war on each other. This keeps them focused locally, and it prevents either one from emerging victorious and thereby posing a greater danger. Western powers should guide enemies to a stalemate by helping whichever side is losing, so as to prolong their debilitating conflict.”

Both Jeffrey Feltman, U.N. Under-Secretary General for Political Affairs and Susan Rice, U.S. Permanent Representative to the U.N, have at a minimum impliedly joined in the intriguing idea of siccing Jabhat al Nusra on the Party of God. This scheme, if launched, would be Feltman’s 14th attempt to topple Hezbollah and defeat the Lebanese National Resistance to the occupation of Palestine since he first arrived in Beirut from Tel Aviv in 2005 to become US Ambassador to Lebanon. This observer, among others in this region sense that given the aura still enveloping the American Embassy here, that Jeffrey never really left his Lebanese ambassadorial post and continues to occupy this position from his new UN office.

This week Feltman warned that the spillover of Syria's war continues to be felt in Lebanon as Susan Rice, echoed him and condemned Hezbollah for “undermining the country's “dissociation policy.” The latter being a bit obscure in meaning but connoting something like sitting around doing nothing while this country is being shelled by jihadists from among the 23 countries currently fighting in Syria. Feltman informed the media on 4/22/13 that “The Secretary-General is concerned by reports that Lebanese are fighting in Syria both on the side of the regime and on the side of the opposition, hopes that the new government will find ways to promote better compliance by all sides in Lebanon with the “disassociation policy.”

Given current divisions in Lebanon that will not happen anymore than Lebanon’s June 9th Parliamentary elections will be held on time.

For her part, Susan lectured the UN Security Council that “Hezbollah actively enables Assad to wage war on the Syrian people by providing money, weapons, and expertise to the regime in close coordination with Iran.” This position was expressed also through a statement by US. State Department spokesman , Patrick Ventrell, who said that Washington “has always been clear concerning Hezbollah’s shameful role and the support it is providing for the Syrian regime and the violence it is inducing in Syria.” Ventrell added: “We were clear from the start concerning the destructive role played by Iran as well as the Iranian role.”Several Israeli agents in Congress are today promoting a Jabhat el Nusra-Hezbollah war even as the Obama administration terror-lists the jihadist group. Meanwhile, Senator Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.), McCain’s neocon Islamaphobe acolyte, goes a bit further and explains to Fox News, once Assad falls and Hezbollah is out of the picture “We can deal with these (jihadist) fellas.”

Recent history in Libya instructs otherwise. As Turkish commentator Cihan Celik recently noted: “A divorce with al-Nusra will not be easy in Syria”

The past two years in Libya, that shadow of a country, reveals countless examples, three witnessed firsthand by this observer, during the long hot summer of 2011. What we saw was Gulf sponsors and funders offering young men, often unemployed, $ 100 per month, free cigarettes, and a Kalashnikov to do jihad. Plenty down and out lads still accept these offers in Libya, as they do in Syria. One reason why the militias proliferated so quickly in Libya and never melted away was the phenomenon of a wannabe jihadists deciding to be a leader and recruiting perhaps a brother or two, maybe a few cousins or tribe members, and presto, they have created a militia with power they never dreamed of. Their new life can offer many perceived benefits from running rough shod over the civilian populations and setting up myriad mini but potent criminal enterprises specializing in kidnappings, robberies, drugs, trafficking in women, and assassinations for cash. How many of these young men have turned in their weapons in Libya and returned to their former lives? Or will do so when instructed by the likes of McCain or Graham? On 4/24/13 Jabhat Al-Nusra Front intensified its threats to officials here including the Lebanese president by releasing a challenge from its media office: “…we inform you – and you may think of that as a warning or an ultimatum – that you must take immediate measures to restrain Hezbollah, otherwise, the fire will reach Beirut. If you do not abide by this within 24 hours, we will consider that you are taking part in the massacres committed by the Hezbollah members and we will unfortunately have to burn everything in Beirut.” In addition they are calling for Jihad and the establishment of the “Resistance Factions for Jihad against the Regime in Syria” and also in Saida and Tripoli, Lebanon.

Israeli officials appear to be in agreement with the Ross/Pipes proposal to arrange for Al Qeada to launch a war against Hezbollah. The Director for External Affairs at “The Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, repeatedly claimed that the Shia are the real threat to Israel, not the Sunni and with the least threat coming from the Gulf monarchs. He offered the view recently that “Israel is now a partner of the Sunni Arab states.” Indeed, Israel hopes that Hezbollah will forget Israel when tasked with trying repel Al Nusra and other al Qaeda affiliate attacks.

According to various Israel officials who have issued statements on the subject, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan and several other members of the Arab League constitute an “alliance of anxiety for Israel” because they claim that “Sunni Arabs are not as competent as the Shia and Iran and as a result they express doubts that Israel can rely on the Sunni states in the same way that the Sunni states can rely on Israel.”

In a documentary about the Iraq war, an American soldier explains: “Actually, we don’t really have much of a problem with the Sunnis. It’s the Shias who we are afraid of. The problem has something to do with their leader who was killed centuries ago and these fellas are willing to lay their life down for the guy. Anyhow, that is what they told us in Special Ops class.”

Al Nusra fighters currently occupying parts the south west areas of Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in south Damascus, recently expressed eagerness to fight Hezbollah which they claim would give them credibility with Sunni Muslims and, oddly, in this observers view, “credibility with western countries”, who supposedly are al Qaeda’s sworn enemies. It’s sometimes hard to know who precisely is whose enemy these days in Syria as the rebels continue using areas east and southwest of Damascus as rear bases and as gateways into the capital.

Despite boasts to the contrary from Jihadist types in Syria and Lebanon, it is not clear to this observer if Jihadist and al Qaeda-affiliated groups living among Hezbollah communities in Lebanon like Fatah al Islam, Jund al Sham or Osbat al Ansar which have been here for years would actually join the Zionist promoted anti-Hezbollah jihad.

But it is evident that some Lebanese Islamists and jihadists directly connected to al Qaeda do have the ability to target Hezbollah. Elements from each of these groups are startling to associate and identify with Jabhat al Nusra, inspired partly by their successful military operations in Syria.

Again, we saw the same thing in Libya. Enthusiastic, ambitious young men who want to improve their lot in life try to go with a winner. According to sources in the Ain al Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp, jihadist leaders such as Haytham and Mohammed al Saadi, Tawfic Taha, Oussama al Shehabi and Majed al Majed are recruiting followers and fighters in Lebanon and offer a ticket out the the squalid army-surrounded, Syrian-refugee-inflated camp.

Homs-based media activist Mohammad Radwan Raad claims that “the embattled residents of the rebel-controlled Homs province town of Al-Qusayr welcome Saida, Lebanon-based Sunni Sheikh Ahmad al-Assir’s call for Jihad in Syria. Claims Raad, “Al-Qusayr residents welcome Assir’s call and hope the Lebanese people help kick out Hezbollah members in the area…We need anyone who can get rid of them.” This week Assir urged his followers to join Syrian rebels fighting troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah. Al-Qusayr has been under rebel control for more than a year and on the scene reports indicate that it is about to be returned to central government control.

In response, two Salafist Sunni Lebanese sheikhs urged their followers to go to Syria to fight a jihad (religious war) in defense of Qusayr's Sunni residents. "There is a religious duty on every Muslim who is able to do so... to enter into Syria in order to defend its people, its mosques and religious shrines, especially in Qusayr and Homs," Sheikh Ahmed al-Assir told his followers. For now, experts say, such calls on the part of Lebanon's Salafists are largely bluster because the movement is far from able to wield either the arsenal or the fighting forces of Hezbollah.

Local analysts like Qassem Kassir argue that Jabhat al Nusra and friends are not organized enough to fight against Hezbollah in a conventional war, but they could cause great damage by organizing bomb attacks against the Party of God’s bases and militants. The latter would be enough initially for Ross and WINEP and their Zionist handlers. Creating chaos in Lebanon being one of their goals but more importantly weakening the National Lebanese Resistance led by Hezbollah and also challenging Syria and Iran.

In a recent speech, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah offered his party’s view about a Western-promoted Sunni-Shia clash, with Al-Nusra, AlQaida and all the groups which flocked to Syria, saying that what was wanted of them was to kill and get killed in Syria, in a massacre which will only serve the enemies of the Arabs and Muslims.

The coming months will reveal to us if the several pro-Zionist Arab regimes as well as Islamophobes, including those at WINEP and other Israel-first think-tanks, are delusional in believing that John McCain’s “simple solution” to those resisting the Zionist occupation of Palestine, would be to assist Jabhat el Nusra type jihadists to make war against Hezbollah.

Whether they could defeat Hezbollah is uncertain but whether Jabhat al Nusra and friends are capable of igniting yet another catastrophe in this region is the looming question.Franklin Lamb is doing research in Lebanon and Syria and is reachable c/o fplamb@gmail.com

River toSeaUprooted PalestinianThe views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!